


Light of Day

by Jain



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Morning After, POV Third Person, Past Tense, Trick or Treat Exchange, Trick or Treat: Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-07-27 19:25:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16225718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jain/pseuds/Jain
Summary: A peaceful morning interlude, sometime in the lull between apocalypses.





	Light of Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shoulder_Devil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shoulder_Devil/gifts).



"We're _what?"_ Jon asked, staring blearily at Martin.

"Going running. Come on, out of bed." Martin's voice was as aggressively cheerful as it usually was. Jon had gotten used to it at work, but he hadn't quite expected it at--he glanced at his watch and suppressed a groan--half six on a Saturday morning. It was difficult to tell with the blinds drawn, but he thought the sun wasn't even up yet.

"But _why_ are we running?"

"It's my running day. Well, actually I like to run three times a week, but Saturday's one of my regular days."

"You didn't say anything about this last night," Jon said suspiciously.

Martin went a bit pink. "To be honest, I wasn't entirely expecting you to still be here when I woke up this morning. But here you are, and it's Saturday, so we're going running. Or we can walk briskly instead if you can't run," he added, painfully sincere.

"Of course I can run," Jon said with some acerbity. "I've done it frequently enough when monsters were chasing me."

"That's good!" Martin said in an encouraging tone. "I mean, not the monsters, obviously. But the running from them. That's actually why I started this routine. You've got to stay fit if you want to avoid being eaten."

"I've done all right so far," Jon said, determinedly ignoring all of the times that that...hadn't quite been true.

Martin gave him a rather pointed look. "I don't think the fact that you haven't died _yet_ is any sort of guarantee for the future. You can't just _rely_ on a deus ex machina rescue, Jon, especially now that you're back to, you know, breathing and having a heartbeat and bleeding whenever you give yourself a papercut.

"And I really, really don't want you to get murdered, or kidnapped and tortured, or even kidnapped and _not_ tortured, just because you could only do an eight minute mile and the thing chasing you could do it in seven."

He possibly had a fair point.

"I haven't any exercise clothes or trainers with me," Jon said in a last ditch effort, not really expecting it to do any good.

It was the truth, though, and given their relative sizes, he couldn't just borrow something of Martin's. When he'd made the extremely impetuous decision to stay the night in response to Martin's equally impetuous (he assumed) invitation, he'd ended up having to sleep in his pants and a borrowed, too big T-shirt. It had been surprisingly comfortable to fall asleep like that, his bare legs entangled with Martin's pajama-clad ones as Martin held him close.

Jon shook off the thought and the warm, melting feeling that accompanied it. The point was, he could hardly go for a run in his underpants and somebody else's T-shirt slipping off his shoulders. Though Martin no doubt had an answer for that, too.

Martin lived up to his expectations. "That's all right. I like to run in my street clothes every so often for practice. It's not as if the monsters are going to give us fifteen minutes to change before they start chasing us, after all."

Jon sighed. He wondered when Martin had gotten so...authoritative. Martin had always had something of a stubborn streak, but he hadn't liked to be at odds with people, even--or perhaps especially--when it came to the little things. One more side-effect of surviving the apocalypse, Jon supposed.

"Also, I'll make you pancakes when we get back," Martin said in a wheedling tone.

"Fine," Jon said resignedly and threw off the duvet. It seemed he was going running.

* * *

The run was...mildly humiliating. For all his talk of outrunning monsters, Martin wasn't particularly fast, and Jon kept up with him easily. For the first mile.

Apparently what Martin lacked in speed, he made up for in endurance and tenacity. Halfway through the second mile, Jon was struggling visibly enough that Martin noticed and slowed their pace. By the end of their third and final mile, their run could more accurately be termed a crawl, solely to accommodate Jon.

He did finish, however, and Martin's pleased smile and heartfelt "Well done!" almost made it all worth it.

And then Martin shooed Jon off to the bathroom for a very necessary shower while he got started on the promised pancakes. There was a glass of water and a banana waiting for Jon when he emerged, once again wearing Martin's T-shirt. His own shirt was too disgustingly sodden with sweat to even contemplate.

Truthfully, his pants and trousers weren't much better, but there were _limits_ , and wandering about Martin's flat in a towel was one of Jon's.

"The pancake batter needs to rest a little longer," Martin said. "I'm going to grab a quick shower in the meantime. Help yourself to more fruit and water, or tea, or anything else you want."

"Thank you," Jon said and sat gratefully at Martin's small table. His legs were feeling the run already; he hoped this wasn't a harbinger of worse pain tomorrow.

He was on his second banana and third glass of water when Martin returned in a fresh cloud of the tangerine-scented body wash that Jon had borrowed during his own shower. It smelled better on Martin. Jon debated back and forth with himself for a minute before getting up and joining Martin by the stove.

"All right?" Martin asked absently, most of his attention on the pat of butter he was melting in a skillet.

"Fine," Jon said. He didn't want to startle Martin when there were hot pans and burners to watch out for, but neither could he just _ask_ for what he wanted. So he leaned slowly and carefully towards Martin, telegraphing his approach, until he was close enough to put his arms around Martin's waist.

"...oh," Martin said, very quietly. Before Jon could worry if that was a bad "oh," Martin rested both hands on Jon's arm and squeezed it gently. "I didn't know if we were still doing this."

"Why wouldn't we be?" Jon asked.

"Oh, well, you know...late night, fear- and grief-fueled decisions aren't exactly the sort of thing that you'd necessarily choose in the light of day."

"I knew what I was doing, Martin," Jon said, then clarified, "What I was choosing." The butter was starting to brown. Jon turned the stove off irritably and moved the pan to another burner, since apparently they were having this conversation after all.

"That's...really good," Martin said, his voice wobbling a little.

Jon sighed and held Martin tighter, rested his forehead on Martin's shoulder. He didn't want this awful responsibility, this capacity to hurt or comfort Martin with no more than an embrace given or denied and a handful of words. He did want Martin's happiness, though, with an odd, fierce, _possessive_ sort of desire. Not to mention that he suspected Martin was more important to his own happiness than he currently wished to examine.

"I don't understand why this is a surprise to you," he said somewhat accusatorially. "You bullied me into running with you. Surely you must have had _some_ expectations, to do that."

Martin gave an aborted shrug, his shoulder flexing and stilling beneath Jon's head. "I didn't really mean it like that. I just didn't want to skip my run--it was hard enough getting started on this exercise routine the first time, and I don't want to give myself any excuses to stop--and I didn't want to kick you out before breakfast, and it would've felt weird to abandon you in my empty flat, so...

"Plus, you really should be running, too. And maybe quit smoking? It's not like you're invulnerable, and I just...I don't want you to get hurt. Again."

"I'm pretty sure I'm going to get hurt again sometime regardless of my cardiovascular fitness levels," Jon said dryly. "But all right, point taken."

Every fiber of Jon recoiled from what he was about to say next except for the part that wanted this godforsaken conversation to be over and the part that actually really did want those pancakes. As far as he was concerned, he'd more than earned them.

So he said, through only slightly gritted teeth, "I'd very much like to spend more time with you, like this. If you want."

"As friends?" Martin asked. "Or..."

"I don't know about you, Martin, but I don't generally sleep with my friends," Jon said acidly.

"I mean, I don't think it's such an unusual thing, actually?" Martin said. "When it's literal sleeping, that is. Sometimes there just aren't enough beds to go around, right? Admittedly, the last time _I_ did, not counting last night, I was probably twelve. But other people do, I think."

"Well, suffice it to say that I don't," Jon said.

"Oh, okay. So does that mean we're...dating?" His voice went rather high on the last word. Jon surprised himself by finding it equal parts annoying and endearing.

"If you want," he repeated. He'd been made well aware of Martin's crush, thanks to his coworkers' habit of gossiping constantly, even in the presence of a running tape recorder. (He ignored the fact that the tape recorders had also been running near-constantly in the lead up to the Unknowing, as though trying to record all that they could before the world became, well, unknowable.)

But a crush wasn't the same as actually wanting to date Jon, who was, he knew, rather far from an ideal boyfriend.

"Of course I do!" Martin said.

And, well, that decided matters. "All right," Jon said. Or, no, that was the wrong thing to say, wasn't it? "Good," he corrected himself.

He gave Martin one last squeeze, then turned the stove back on and shifted the pan to the correct burner.

As he turned to go back to the table, Martin said, "Wait!"

Jon waited.

"I'd...um...rather like to kiss you. If that's all right? If it's too soon, I don't mind, obviously, but..."

Jon cut his babble off with a quick, soft press of his lips to Martin's, and then another longer one.

Martin blinked at him when he pulled away. "Oh," he said. A rather sweet smile spread across his face. "Thanks?"

Jon rolled his eyes. "I didn't just do it for your benefit."

"No, I know," Martin said, sounding a bit firmer. "But thanks anyway. Oh, crap!" This last to the pan, which had begun to smoke lightly.

"Sorry," Jon said, even though it was at least 80 percent Martin's fault.

"No, no, it's fine," Martin said. He added another pat of butter to the pan and swirled it around quickly, then ladled some batter into the pan. "Just sit down and stop distracting me while I cook."

He was smiling as he said it, though, and Jon felt an answering and wholly unfamiliar glow open up in his chest. He sat down and drank some more water.

"I'll eat this first one," Martin said. "I don't mind when they're a little burnt."

The second pancake, a perfect golden brown, he gave to Jon.

"This is quite good," Jon told him after the first bite, doing his best to keep an unflattering note of surprise out of his voice.

Martin blushed and ducked his head a little. "Thanks. They're pretty much the only thing I can cook that doesn't come prepackaged. My mum liked to have a lie-in on Sundays, so she taught me how to make pancakes for breakfast, but she never got around to teaching me how to cook anything else."

He gave Jon the third pancake, as well. Jon took it without complaint but said, "The next one's yours. You need to eat, too."

Martin ate his pancakes with icing sugar and lemon juice. It tasted surprisingly good when Jon tried a bite, though he still preferred the butter and syrup that Martin had put on the table for him.

When they'd both finished, Jon washed the dishes over Martin's protests. Martin sat at the table and chatted while Jon worked, about their coworkers and Martin's book club (Jon hadn't realized that he was in one, but wasn't at all surprised to hear it) and the research he was doing into Birmingham crematoria as follow-up for a recent statement.

Jon contributed the occasional comment and let the soothing stream of information flow over him. Finally he placed the last utensil in the rack and dried his hands. "I should be going."

Martin nodded. He didn't ask where Jon had to go at 8:20 on a Saturday morning. He probably knew without having to be told.

Having Peter as acting head of the Institute was like having a festering splinter under his skin, but Jon had discovered that the longer he spent away from the Institute, the worse it felt when he returned. He didn't know if this was because he lost his tolerance during those absences, or if it was because his being there in the Institute actually...disrupted Peter's influence somehow. Regardless, he'd taken to going into work every Saturday, and even some Sundays. Maybe it was thwarting Peter a little; at the very least, it made Jon feel better.

"You can wear my T-shirt home, if you like," Martin offered. He got up to rummage under the sink for a moment and produced a plastic bag. "For your shirt," he said and handed it to Jon.

In the interests of not offending everyone in smelling distance of him during his bus ride home, Jon very much did like. "Thanks," he said. He collected his things, and Martin walked him to the door.

"Will you have dinner with me on Tuesday?" Martin blurted just as Jon was about to say his goodbyes.

"Tuesday?" Jon repeated, stalling.

Martin nodded. "We could go out to eat, or get takeaway. Whatever you prefer."

Three days away. The length of time suggested that Martin wanted to see him fairly regularly but didn't want to move too fast. Or perhaps Jon was overthinking things, and Martin was simply busy in the intervening evenings. It hardly mattered; Jon's answer was the same regardless.

"That sounds good."

Martin smiled brilliantly at him. "Great!"

A brief silence followed. Jon cringed inwardly. This was the worst part of beginning a new relationship: the not knowing what to do or how to fit together. Before the awkwardness could spread to envelop Martin, Jon forced himself into action. He just had to trust that Martin wouldn't mind too much if he got it wrong.

He pulled Martin into a hug, and Martin returned it at once, his thick arms holding Jon as warmly and carefully as he had the previous night. Jon soaked up the feeling for he didn't know how long--a minute? five?--and then let go. "I'll see you at work on Monday," he said.

"See you then," Martin said and held the door open for Jon as he headed out into the bright morning sunshine.


End file.
